The Heart Knows Its Home
by kissedagirlandilikedit
Summary: Amelia is looking for her real parents after being put up for adoption twenty years before. She's the last thing they expected, and the one thing they needed. Season 7 AU, House/Cuddy never broke up.  if TPTB can ignore canon, so can I
1. The Call

The girl in Grand Central Station straightens her backpack, adjusts the bangs that have been falling into her face again. To anyone watching, she looks like any other college student, worn jeans and Birkenstocks, her long dark hair pulled back, though not tightly enough to hide the noticeable ringlets. Her eyes are a startling cerulean, clear and perceptive. They narrow now as she scans the train times against the wall, and checks her ticket. An announcement for the next New Jersey Transit echoes through the main hall, and she watches the shift in the crowd as businessmen head for the door, and follows them down to the platform.

On the train, she pulls out her laptop, opens the document that she has practically memorized from all the times she's stared at it in the dark of her room. "The youngest dean of medicine in the country," she reads to herself, and blinks at the all too familiar picture beside the article, the wide smile, the eyes bright even in a black and white picture.

"Where are you headed?" A young man across from her is grinning over his iPad. She notices the bright orange PRINCETON on his sweatshirt.

"Is that where you go to school? Princeton?"

"What? Oh." He looks down at his front, laughs. "No, this is my brother's. I'm going to NYU in the fall. He's the Ivy Leaguer in the family."

"That's my stop, actually. Princeton."

"Business or pleasure?"

"I'm visiting someone."

"A boyfriend?"

"Someone I haven't seen in a very long time."

"So you don't have a boyfriend, then?"

"That is classified information. And before you start throwing passwords at me, I'm not going to be interested no matter what you try."

She ignores his stunned frustration with a wry smile, returns to the article. Only five more stops, and she's there. She's closer than she's been in eighteen years.

_Just...please remember me._

She gets the call around midnight, startling her from a dream in which all the doors in the hospital have been locked, and she's trapped inside, trying to punch through the glass. When her eyes open, she's surprised to find her knuckles unbruised, bare.

"Is this Lisa Cuddy?"

"Yes," She sits up, sees that Rachel is curled up on House's side of the bed, her doll tucked under her chin. Rachel stirs but does not wake, her tiny face smiling in her sleep. "Who is this?"

"I'm so sorry to disturb at this time of night. My husband didn't think we should call, but I thought it was necessary. I just have this feeling, if that makes sense."

"I'm sorry?"

"Oh, it's about our...well, she's..." The woman's voice trails off momentarily, and Cuddy can hear a long sigh on the other end. "Amelia's run away, and we think she's trying to find you."

"You must have the wrong Lisa Cuddy, I'm sorry."

"You're the Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital, aren't you? Maybe the agency gave us the wrong number. But we also found your information in Amelia's desk. It looks like she's been researching you, and we-"

"I'm very sorry, but I don't see how she could possibly be looking for me. I don't know any Amelias."

"Oh, of course. This is my fault. We named her Amelia, so how could you possibly know?"

"I still don't understand. What is this about?"

"It's about your daughter. Amelia is your daughter."


	2. Trailer on Youtube!

The trailer for The Heart Knows Its Home is now up on youtube! Check it out for a preview of what's to come. Next chapter is up in a few hours, keep watching!

.com/watch?v=O6fhZ30Uy4s


	3. Awake My Soul

_Author's Note: I'm aware that this is a bit different from the canon. As I said in my description, this is a slight AU because if the powers that be can fuck canon into eternity, then I can and will, too. _

House liked watching her wake up. Her wrists would be pressed together, tucked under her chin like a child, mouth curled slightly into the distant contentment of sleep. When she awoke, she'd stir against him, her eyelashes fluttering as if testing the air. Sometimes Rachel was pressed between them from a late nightmare, her tiny body rising and falling between their ribcages like a warm promise, her pudgy hands making fists in his palm. When she had bad dreams, it was House she considered to be her safety blanket, and she'd cling to him with a strength far beyond that of a toddler, nuzzling his chest until she'd fallen back to sleep.

"Good morning," Cuddy would say, and she'd always be the first to say it, even if he'd been up all night waiting to whisper it into her ear, even if she was the reason his morning had any sun in it to begin with.

This morning he is alone in his own apartment, the light still on in the kitchen, the television buzzing and the remote clenched in his hand. He sits up on the couch, kneading his temples. He'd gotten back from the hospital around 3 or 4, but he can't remember now, all of it a dark blur. The patient had passed away in the late evening, her heart finally giving out. Pneumonia of all things, and he remembers that Rachel had pneumonia last winter and he'd brought over a blanket that he'd had as a child, and the way Cuddy had looked at it when she'd brought it up to his nose, as if trying to take in the boy he'd once been, as if he were still in there somewhere, holding on for safety. She'd thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. That had been all he'd needed, then.

His phone is vibrating against his hip, and he swings one leg over and lifts the other onto the coffee table. Morning stiffness without any of the double entendres.

"House? It's me."

"Good morning. Wow, finally beat you to it."

"What?"

"You always-"

He could hear the uncharacteristic strain in her voice, the slight tension that she was doing a poor job of hiding. "I'm calling in sick today. Rachel's got a fever, I think I'd better stay home with her."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"I don't think the hospital needs to lose its dean and its best diagnostician over a toddler's head cold."

"I could stop over before I get to work. You sound...worried."

"I'm not. I'm just...I'm flustered. It's fine. Get to work, you're going to be late."

"It wouldn't be a problem if I-"

"That was an order from your boss. Go."

"Yes, ma'am."

To quote a line he hates quoting, something is afoot.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Cuddy pulls Rachel onto her lap, running her hand through the little girl's dark hair. Rachel's sucking on her fingers, a habit she's recently taken up and one House hasn't done a very good job of discouraging.

"Rachel, do you know what a lie is?"

"Yes. Doing lying is when you don't tell the truth but you're 'spose to."

"Do you know what a secret is?"

Rachel shakes her head, still sucking her fingers. Cuddy attempts to pull them out of her mouth but Rachel gives her a glare that she has clearly learned from her other favorite adult.

"A secret is when you don't tell anyone about something because it's important. You have to keep it to yourself."

"That's doing lying, Mommy."

"No, it's different."

"But if you don't tell anyone the truth, you're doing a lie."

"It's...different."

"I don't think so." Rachel shakes her head fervently, giggling, and then hops off the bed.

Cuddy lets out a sigh, staring at the phone that's still sitting in her palm. She starts to dial House's number and then stops herself. Now is not the time. Now was never the time.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

MICHIGAN, 1989

She watches him wake up. It's not the first time she's done this - they've studied late before and he's fallen asleep with his head thrown back in a library chair, and once he was so drunk that he fell asleep in her lap with his arms around her waist, mumbling into her shirt. It is the first time she's watched him wake up in her bed, and it's strange to see him like this, his hair tousled like a boy's, his arms askew. There's a slight smile on his lips, the kind of grin that betrays his perhaps too pleasant dream, and she bends for a moment to kiss him on the corner of his mouth, tasting her last kiss there like a memory.

The kiss stirs him, and his eyes start to open. He lets out a groan, gropes with his hand for her face. She laughs, pushes him back into the back.

"I had no idea you were such a morning person."

"What time is it?"

"I think it's ten."

"Ten..." He rolls back over, burying his face in the pillow. His hand is still moving though, and when it finds her naked waist, the curve of her hip, the pillow moans a little. She smiles again, closes her eyes. Her roommate's bed is still empty, and Lisa thinks she might have gone home with that senior from down the hall, a bad choice for a freshman. Then again, Lisa's in bed with a grad student, and this makes her grin to herself before letting her body curve onto his.

"Wait." Greg rolls over again, and she's confronted with those stunning eyes, paralyzing as ever. Somehow they're even more shocking in the morning. "Did you say ten?"

"Yes? Ten in the morning. Saturday. Should I go get a sundial to back it up?"

"Shit...SHIT." Greg's suddenly flying into the air, all naked six foot two inches of him, racing for his clothes, missing his boxers entirely. "The committee is meeting today."

"What committee?"

"It's my hearing."

"Your hearing for what?"

"It's disciplinary...never mind, look. They started at nine thirty, so-"

"You have a disciplinary hearing? What the hell is that about?"

"It was a misunderstanding, don't worry about it-"

She pulls the sheets to her front, stands up. "So you're just running out then. Just like that."

"This is kind of a big deal, Lisa."

"Don't call me that."

"Call you what?"

"Don't...don't call me anything. I don't know."

"Okay, then...Cuddy? Well, Cuddy. I hate to eat and run, but-"

"Yeah, literally."

"I'll see you around?"

"Oh, I doubt that."

With one foot in his jeans, he stumbles backwards towards the door. "Come on, Cuddles. Any other morning and I'd make you breakfast in bed and put your new namesake to shame, it's just this hearing."

"Did you attack a student?"

"I know last night we were taking it a little rough, but I really strike you as violent?"

"Drugs? Drinking violation?"

"A joint a day keeps the doctor away, but has yet to be detected."

"Did you cheat?"

"That is up for debate."

"Oh, god. You cheated?"

"Not exactly."

"You did."

"Like I said, up for debate. And much as I have enjoyed being your master debater, I need to go debate to keep my spot here."

"You're unbelievable."

"So were you. Mind-blowing. That ass? How does a Jewish girl from the suburbs end up with a porn star ass? But like I said, I need to go defend my honor."

"I just can't...believe you."

"Call me Ripley's, babe. Believe it or not, that's up to you." He opens the door as he does his belt, blowing a kiss toward where she stands, naked, in front of her bed. "We should do this again some time."

The pillow hits the door where his grinning face had been only seconds before. She groans, and falls backwards onto the bed, The Cure's "Lovesong" blaring down the hall.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

She's only been in a train once before. Her parents had taken her to Florida when she was young, and instead of flying, they'd ridden a train all the way down the coast. She'd pressed her eight year old hands up to the window and watched the water moving past them, chased the light across the seat where her parents were sleeping. When the conductor came past to announce the stops, he'd winked.

She remembers one station, though she doesn't remember where. The sun had been setting and the water was getting dark, a dusky rose. Her nose was still up against the glass, and she was getting sleepier, her head bobbing with the movement of the train. When they'd pulled onto the platform there was a group of people waiting, and one woman had caught her eyes. She watched her pick up her suitcase, dark hair falling in front of her eyes, her long fingers straightening her business suit. Amelia had held her breath for a moment, wondering if this could be her. In her mind, her mother was a million faces, dark hair and bright eyes that must look like her own, caring hands, a smile like her teacher's, clever and knowing. But then the woman who moved out of view, and Amelia had thought for the thousandth time that it couldn't be her, that any of them could be her, and even if it was her, she wasn't going to want her back.

She'd looked over at her parents, sleeping there with their heads on each other's shoulders. Mark and Andrea were the sweetest people in the whole world, and they were hers, and she loved them to death. They'd adopted her from foster care when she'd just started walking, and they'd bought her a red bike for her fourth birthday so she knew how to ride before all the other kids on the block. They'd let her wear purple shorts with purple shirts to school, and taught her to tie her shoelaces into shapes. They were perfect, and she wasn't asking for more.

She was just asking for an answer.

The conductor walks by, winks. "Newark, Penn Station."

"You should get some shut-eye." The boy across from her nods over his newspaper, smiles again. "How long have you been up?"

"Long enough." She watches the east horizon, her blue eyes taking in the hint of orange on the ridges beyond. "I want to see the sunrise."

"Suit yourself."

In the distance, the first tangerine rays start breaking through the grey. Amelia smiles to herself. She's always liked to watch the world wake up.


End file.
